Budget cuts in 2018 caused the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to shut down 80 percent of an initiative aimed at preventing global disease outbreaks. In October, the US Agency for International Development was forced to shut down a program that deployed teams to detect and halt the spread of disease from animals to humans, including at markets where animals were being improperly slaughtered. Trump's budget proposal for 2021 would slash CDC funding by 16 percent.
The White House has eliminated the positions for advisers on global health issues from the National Security Council (NSC). Trump fired Tom Bossert, his homeland security adviser on the NSC, in 2018. His responsibilities included overseeing the US government's response to pandemics, but he was never replaced.
Health workers have not been prepared to handle the outbreak. NBC News reported Friday that a government whistleblower has filed a complaint that the Department of Health and Human Services dispatched a dozen employees without proper training or equipment to interact with Americans evacuated from Wuhan, China, and placed in quarantine on military bases in California.
The whistleblower complaint notes that HHS employees had face-to-face contact with the individuals heading into quarantine, handing out keys for room assignments and identification ribbons. While the workers have not shown symptoms of the virus, such major breaches in protocol could have resulted in transmission.
Two weeks after the CDC announced that it would launch a surveillance testing program in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle, the initiative had still not begun. Meanwhile, scientists at 40 labs across the US were only given the go-ahead Wednesday night to use a test for detecting the coronavirus. A problem had been discovered with one of the ingredients in the test, limiting almost all testing for the last two months to one CDC lab in Atlanta.
The disastrous state of preparedness for the spread of the disease in the United States is not just the responsibility of the Trump administration. For decades, the ruling elite, under both Democrats and Republicans, has overseen the devastation of social infrastructure. Trillions have been expended to bail out the banks, finance the US war machine and erect a massive police-state apparatus. A series of natural disasters, from hurricanes to wildfires, has exposed the fact that the government cannot protect the population from entirely predictable threats to public well-being.
For the past three years, the Democrats have focused their entire opposition to Trump on the claim that Russia represents a grave threat to "American democracy," as the ruling class fights out differences over foreign policy. Meanwhile, real threats to millions of workers and young people have been covered up, and opposition to the Trump administration based on the social interests of the vast majority of the population suppressed.
The Socialist Equality Party supports the call of the International Committee of the Fourth International for a globally-coordinated emergency response to the coronavirus pandemic.
The working class must mobilize now to demand a massive allocation of resources for health care and treatment, and to ensure that all those who are impacted by the economic fallout are compensated and received financial support. The trillions of dollars which are held by the global super-rich must be confiscated to develop the necessary health care infrastructure around the world without regard to national boundaries.
In our election campaign, Norissa Santa Cruz and I will fight to mobilize the working class to fight for these demands as part of a political offensive, in opposition to the Republicans and the Democrats, against inequality, war, and the capitalist system.
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